The Konquest of Nonexistence
by autumnsoliloquy
Summary: or There, There, The Boney King of Nowhere. A Kon character piece a.k.a. Where art thou, Kon-sama? Slight FB Arc spoilers


Title: **The Konquest of Nonexistence; or There, There, The Boney King of Nowhere.**

Author: autumnsoliloquy

Character/Pairing: Kon/IchiRuki

Summary: A Kon character piece a.k.a. Where art thou, Kon-sama? Slight FB Arc spoilers

Disclaimer: Bleach and its characters belong to Kubo Tite. "There. There. (The Boney King of Nowhere)" belongs to Radiohead, from their album _Hail to the Thief.  
><em>

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><p><em>In pitch dark I go walking in your landscape<em>_  
>Broken branches trip me as I speak<br>Just because you feel it, doesn't mean it's there_

"There. There. (The Boney King of Nowhere)", Radiohead_, _Hail to the Thief__

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><p><strong>{i} <em>There's always a siren singing you to shipwreck<em>**

Kon couldn't believe his eyes. _Wow I have eyes! _His very own eyes. Only his. As he touched his face – _his _face! – warm flesh like a human's but not quite, the stranger-like self in the reflection mirrored his actions like one of those mime performances he once saw with Nee-san. There was childish curiosity reflected in those green unfamiliar eyes, framed by soft features on a good-looking face. It was the face he chose, a face out of his imagination, an amalgamation of all the genial yet attractive masculine faces adorning the pages of the _hentai_ magazines he used to spend his days reading.

_That Urahara is really one helluva genius._ Kon had come to his shop one day, his stuffed cotton body soaked to the felt, dripping rain all over the tatami mat. He could barely even begin to voice out his distress back then, but the old shinigami merely stared at him with a knowing glint in his eye and wore an indecipherable smile on his face.

Urahara then offered to fashion him a spirit body out of reishi. Kon had jumped naturally with enthusiasm at the suggestion, eagerly demanding at once the most perfect body the shinigami scientist could sculpt out of thin air. _A body! His only, not to be shared with someone else! _It was a dream come true. Kon scrutinized every inch of his new body, like one inspecting a new suit received on his birthday. Black tousled hair and a lean, muscular body of average height, it wasn't exactly what he had always hoped for (he requested a fiery shade for his hair and a build that would dwarf Ichigo's, but Urahara suggested something more inconspicuous in appearance), but _man, he looked sexy!_

He continued admiring himself in the mirror contentedly. And yet, for some reason, a prick of regret gnawed at his chest. Kon was never a sentimental guy from the start, but now that he'd finally gotten the body he'd been wishing for – a real body to call his own – why couldn't he just feel happy and _complete?_

"What do you think of it?" Urahara asked, as if reading Kon's thoughts. Kon swore that creepy guy had developed telepathic abilities. He wouldn't put it past Urahara's genius mind to accomplish something like that. Especially after he had given Kon such a gorgeous spirit body.

Kon quickly tried to conceal his previous depressing thoughts from the shinigami through feigned self-consciousness (Ichigo and Nee-san would know he could _never _be self-conscious even when forced to).

"Arigatou, Urahara-san," he said with earnest gratitude, ignoring his own reservations. Kon wondered how it must feel like for Urahara to clothe one of his ex-merchandise with a spirit body. To now treat something he originally created to be ultimately destroyed, like a person, a real spirit entity deserving a life and future.

"You shouldn't thank me, Kon-san. It is just my duty to fulfill the request of a loyal customer such as Kuchiki-san." Perhaps sensing Kon's shock, Urahara explained further, "she wanted me to find you a home after all that's happened."

"Besides, the Urahara Shouten always takes back its faulty merchandise."

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><p><strong>{ii} <em>Steer away from these rocks <em>_w__e'd be a walking disaster_**

It took him a while to get it.

It was only logical, natural in fact, for things to come to this. Even so, it took him almost a week to realize then finally accept it.

"Ichigo, you idiot! Get up, you lazy bastard!" For good measure, Kon aimed a pillow at the sleeping bastard's orange head.

It was exactly just like last time Nee-san left. As usual, the bastard let her go without even making her at least say goodbye to Kon before leaving. That orange-headed idiot hardly even acknowledged Kon's presence when he finally woke up from a month-long coma (Kon seriously feared he would die and condemn Kon to living in his body forever), and then when he came back to the house Rukia-neesan wasn't with him. The fact that Kon had not seen her ever since then could only lead him to assume that she had left them once again, and that idiot had not tried to stop her at all.

Just like the previous times, Ichigo moped around in his bed for days, crawling out of his room only when nagged by his sisters to eat. No matter how much Kon screamed at him, demanding an explanation for his Nee-san's disappearance, or hurled insults at him about his manhood and the usual, or threw a flying stuffed-toy kick at his thick head, Kon could not elicit a response from Ichigo. He too was depressed by Nee-san's absence and missed her so, but Ichigo's wallowing in self-pity was starting to affect him as well.

It was then that a muffled voice came from the motionless body lying on the bed. "Kon, are you here?"

"Of course I'm here, you idiot! Good that you finally decided to talk, now you can explain to me why Nee-san—"

"Sorry, Kon. You can't stay here anymore."

"What are you talking about, you—"

Ichigo rolled over before finally sitting up, rocking the side of the bed such that Kon was tossed onto the floor before he could even complete his indignant reply at being evicted from the house. Ichigo picked up Kon's plushie body and stared at him with an expression so pathetic Kon almost feared for his life.

"I don't even know if you're still in this body, but I can't hear or see spirits anymore, so it's pointless for you to stay here."

Kon struggled violently against Ichigo's deathly grip, his short limbs thrashing hopelessly trying to land a scratch on the idiot's face with his paws. How could it possible that the bastard can't see him when he was there knocking the breath out of Kon's stuffing with his fist? How could that asshole not hear him when Kon had been swearing at him so loudly that he was sure even the neighbours could hear? Kon couldn't take this bullshit from Ichigo anymore. If Ichigo didn't want to explain Nee-san's departure to him – Kon was sure it was Ichigo's fault again – he didn't have to come up with such a ridiculous lie as an excuse to get rid of Kon.

But no matter what Kon did, Ichigo sat there with that pathetic look on his face, staring listlessly at his stuffed body.

That was when Kon realized that perhaps all Ichigo could see right now was an inanimate, rather girly-looking, lion plushie in his hand.

Kon stopped resisting, and then it was just like that time, once again as if he was but a green ball of insignificance, waiting and waiting.

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><p><strong>{iii} <em>why so green and lonely?<em>**

Jump!

High up in the air, the feeling of the breeze resisting his motion. The stretch of sinewy muscles, the spring of every step, blood rushing through this body's veins and against the ears, the sun beating down on the skin covered with sweat, the rhythmic pumping of his heart… all of it was a drug making him high with euphoria.

Down below the skyscrapers, people watched in amazement and awe, their jaws dropped. They pointed excitedly at him. _He had their complete attention!_

This must be how happiness feels like.

He was free!

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><p><strong>{iv} <em>we are accidents waiting to happen<em>**

The people here were, surprisingly, quite nice. Well, at least from what Kon had been used to, they were nice. Or rather, they weren't really that nice.

In fact, Kon realized, they were exactly just like Ichigo and Nee-san.

He didn't really know why, but as soon as Kon got his spirit body from Urahara the first thing he thought of doing was running over to the Kurosaki Clinic and showing off his hot new body to that idiot Ichigo. That bastard would then know that against such an attractive body Ichigo wouldn't stand a chance in competing for Nee-san's affections.

But before he could realize that Ichigo could probably never have a chance to be jealous of Kon's new body seeing that he had lost his shinigami powers completely, Yoruichi-san sent Kon's ass off to Soul Society to live with one Shiba Kuukaku and her brother Ganju.

As Kon immediately flew to the valley of the gods, the punch that so lovingly greeted him almost reminded him with nostalgia of good old days in Karakura. The younger Shiba, meanwhile, was just as annoying in demeanor and so full of himself like Ichigo was. But at least Ichigo fought with Nee-san on equal terms; this guy, he seemed too scared to dare anything remotely disrespectful towards his older sister.

Naturally they fell into the dynamics with which he had been so familiar and they were most comfortable, so in a nutshell, Kon was still treated like shit, but he liked it. No, he didn't just admit that.

But the big change is that Kon receives admiration now. He has a gorgeous body now instead of stuffed toy, remember? Never had he dreamt in his wildest dreams – and _boy, were they wild_ – that women in Rukongai would be fawning over him.

Sometimes, in the most random moments, Kon would remember a particular rainy July night. The orange-haired idiot was fighting the Hollow which killed his mother, and Kon had just successfully convinced Nee-san to save the bastard from his suicide mission. He had been left with the duty of bringing back Ichigo's sisters to a shelter, which Kon eventually found in a nearby temple. As they slowly came to, Kon was forced to painfully furrow Ichigo's orange eyebrows in his usual manner.

_Ichi-nii_, Yuzu murmured as she warmed up beside him. It had felt nice then, pretending to be that girl's older brother.

Or sometimes, he remembered what Nee-san said to Ichigo that same afternoon as he hid himself in her backpack, seething with jealousy and hoping it was _him _instead of that asshole she gave that speech to.

But most of the time, it would just be a random memory of watching the two idiots – well, Nee-san could behave rather _stupidly_ sometimes under the influence of Ichigo – fighting over the stupidest things, or the feeling of waiting in Ichigo's room as he searched desperately for Nee-san the first time she disappeared.

Kon could never really forgive them for giving him a ridiculous and unsexy plushie toy as a temporary body, but he owed them for saving his life. And maybe, if Kon _were_sentimental enough to admit it, he'd even concede that in that small clandestine patchwork family they formed, that was where Kon found a place to belong.

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><p><strong>{v} <em>there's someone on your shoulder<em>**

The truth is, Kon wasn't really _that _perverted.

Sure, he could be rather aggressive in his overtures towards his objects of affection, but there is almost always no malicious intent in his actions. _Almost_.

If you think about it, how could someone possessing no physical body possibly be controlled by sexual hormones and the instinct to procreate?

Kon preferred to call himself a connoisseur of the female body of all shapes and sizes. The feminine figure, with its dangerous curves and contours, always appears so magnetizing and captivating to him. (Though he wouldn't deny that he had admired his own reflection with narcissistic denial once or twice when borrowing Ichigo's body.) Every woman's body was a paragon of beauty, in Kon's opinion, and must therefore be accorded with the appropriate amount of admiration.

Isn't it just natural that someone with no physical body of his own would be obsessed with the body, organic or otherwise?

_It's actually quite healthy_, Kon would like to insist, _thank you very much._

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><p><strong>{vi} <em>don't reach out don't reach out<em>**

Sometimes he felt envious of them.

Not that he wanted Nee-san for himself. (Though admittedly, she deserves better than that idiot.) All right, he was jealous of that bastard most of the time, because how could Ichigo, for all his stupidity, win the affections of such a lovely maiden like Nee-san? It wasn't fair. And yet, Kon couldn't deny that he was jealous of Nee-san too.

He envied them because somehow he knew, perhaps he would never find something like theirs for himself.

Mod souls, in the bigger scheme of life and death, were never supposed to exist. They were created and destined for destruction at the will of their creator, no more or less significant than a merchant's commodity. The tangible feeling of his spirit body rejuvenated by this world's reishi-filled atmosphere fueled the rebellious streak in him; that his mere existence in this world, breathing this air and occupying this very space, was like defying destiny. He guessed that this must be how it felt to be alive.

Nevertheless the same spirit body reminded him constantly of its artifice. He was never meant to exist, so could there even be the slimmest of possibilities against all hope, that he was created for a special purpose, for a special someone else too?

No, he didn't envy them. Not really. It was just a lonely feeling, knowing that the two of them shared something he could never partake in, something he would probably never experience for himself.

**_Just because you feel it, doesn't mean it's there_**

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><p>{Author's Notes}<p>

Concrit is always appreciated!

The song by Radiohead can be heard here: youtube[dot]com/watch?v=byIpouaRwGw

I really hope Kubo has something for Kon instead of just having forgotten him.


End file.
